the Christmas night
it began to blossom quite of itself. The dry twigs were covered
with red buds, which shone like sparks of fire and lighted the
whole room.

By the light of the sparks one saw that a small and slender but
quite elderly lady sat in the big arm-chair and held her court. It
could not be Mamsell Fredrika herself, for she lay sleeping in
quiet repose, and yet it was she. She sat there and held a
reception for old memories; the room was full of them. People and
homes and subjects and thoughts and discussions came flying.
Memories of childhood and memories of youth, love and tears, homage
and bitter scorn, all came rushing towards the pale form that sat
and looked at everything with a friendly smile. She had words of
jest or of sympathy for them all.

At night everything takes its right size and shape. And just as
then for the first time the stars of heaven are visible, one also
sees much on earth that one never sees by day. Now in the light of
the red buds of the Jericho rose one could see a crowd of strange
figures in Mamsell Fredrika's drawing-room. The hard "ma chere
mere" was there, the goodnatured Beata Hvardagslag, people from the
East and the West, the enthusiastic Nina, the energetic, struggling
Hertha in her white dress.

"Can any one tell me why that person must always be dressed in
white?" jested the little figure in the arm-chair when she caught
sight of her.

All the memories spoke to the old woman and said: "You have seen
and experienced so much; you have worked and earned so much! Are
you not tired? will you not go to rest?"

"Not yet," answered the shadow in the yellow arm-chair. "I have
still a book to write. I cannot go to rest before it is finished."

Thereupon the figures vanished. The Jericho rose went out, and the
yellow arm-chair stood empty.

In the Oesterhaninge church the dead were celebrating midnight mass.
One of them climbed up to the bell-tower and rang in Christmas;
another went about and lighted the Christmas candles, and a third
began with bony fingers to play the organ. Through the open doors
others came swarming in out of the night and their graves to the
bright, glowing House of the Lord. Just as they had been in life
they came, only a little paler. They opened the pew doors with
rattling keys and chatted and whispered as they walked up the
aisle.

"They are the candles _she_ has given the poor that are now shining
in God's house."

"We lie warm in our grav